First bad review of the 950

It's got that sense that while everything works to spec but nothing feels quite right.

I agree with this. But the thing is, I LIKE the new things in W10M enough that I don't want to go back to WP8.1. It's rough around the edges, but things like the new action center, the new voice dictation keyboard and the new settings are things I use almost every single time I pick up the phone now. They are worth it to me, and I think ready for primetime. I wish the visual flourishes of the OS gave a better "feeling" though. :/

Tired of all the bad press against Microsoft. Microsoft actually did pretty good with this launch and with Windows 10 Mobile. No it's not perfect but good gosh neither is Android 6.0 Marshmallow or iOS 9. iOS 9 was far more buggy right after it released!
Everything that I've seen suggests the Lumia 950 is a great, solid phone with a fantastic screen, fantastic camera, smooth performance and solid build quality. Some sites just refuse to accept that Microsoft can actually do something right.

I stopped by AT&T yesterday to see the Lumia 950. Impressive screen and a good feel. I've been using a 925 for a couple of years and it worked flawlessly out of the box and continues to do so. I use it as a serious communications device for voice, texting and email. Was truly looking forward to an upgrade, but I can't take a chance on messaging & email crashing when communicating with clients. If I spend $600 for a phone, I expect it to work. I'm encouraged that so many in these forums feel that Microsoft is already hard at work fixing these "little glitches". I hope you're right. I would love to have a 950. I'll keep checking these forums and later reviews. Maybe things will get better.

And really we're in 2015 and no other platform vendor provides an elegant screen projection solution let alone working over it. Tbh, continuum is one of those "simplest ideas are usually the best ones." We will see who's laughing in the end.

I wouldn't call it elegant, but you can mirror android on your TV via Chromcast. And use keyboard and mouse (USB or bluetooth). This all works on a $50 android tablet...

iOS 9's bugs are a far cry from what I'm seeing with Windows 10. Apple has been smart enough to leave the core experience largely untouched. And while they're slipping, the OS still feels polished. Microsoft, however, decided that they needed to overhaul every little thing and in far too many cases, for the worse.

The problems I'm encountering aren't bugs for the most part. It's a widespread of lack of polish and changes that don't improve the experience over what I had in WP 8.1. The OS doesn't even get the basics right. Touch is extremely twitchy, even on the home screen where it occasionally misreads swipes. The difference is glaring compared to my Lumia 920 which offered fluidity and precision comparable to an iPhone.

Sadly, every time I lean towards keeping the phone I encounter a new source of frustration; the latest being Cortana's awful new web search and a ridiculous inability to save images from that search like I could previously.

It seems that Microsoft allowed feature creep to spiral out of control and decided to cut their loses when they realized they weren't going to meet their deadline. I also wonder if Microsoft outsourced the entirety of Windows 10 for mobile. It's got that sense that while everything works to spec but nothing feels quite right.

Perhaps the strategy is to bide time until Surface Phones arrive next year. But in the meantime I don't see how the platform isn't going to do anything but hemorrhage users. And that means that the platform gap is going to persist for the foreseeable future.

It pains me to be no negative because I really want to support the platform. Frustratingly, for a platform that was supposedly intended for the fans it feels more like an insult.

Windows 10 was a massive target. MS were focusing on desktop and XBOX and IOT and Hololens. Mobile looks like it was last on the list.

Not forgetting MS laid off about the half the phones team (again) in the last few months.

There are a few articles around like that, which isn't a lot unusual when a new device drops but what I don't understand is why these these people care about what I spend my money on? If a restaurant had not real clean cooking conditions then by all means let me know. But this is a cell phone. It is web enabled device and can do some of the things I can do at home on my computer. So what is it with ars-technica or the Verge telling me where I should spend my money on?

And who is dumb enough to allow them to tell you what you should and should not like? They have taken the blog thing too dang far if you ask me. When they start buying and paying the bill, then I'll believe they got skin in the game. Beyond that, they sound like a bunch of angry men wearing pumps..

There are a few articles around like that, which isn't a lot unusual when a new device drops but what I don't understand is why these these people care about what I spend my money on? If a restaurant had not real clean cooking conditions then by all means let me know. But this is a cell phone. It is web enabled device and can do some of the things I can do at home on my computer. So what is it with ars-technica or the Verge telling me where I should spend my money on?

And who is dumb enough to allow them to tell you what you should and should not like? They have taken the blog thing too dang far if you ask me. When they start buying and paying the bill, then I'll believe they got skin in the game. Beyond that, they sound like a bunch of angry men wearing pumps..

So you're on the hunt for a new phone right? And you pick a phone you think looks nice and start doing some research to make sure you make a good investment. Where do you go to? reviews right? Ok. So if every review out there is not making this phone out to be great, including windows positive websites, then of course you're going to pick another phone and again go through reviews. You want to know you're getting your money's worth. And without putting down the money you have no way of judging for yourself, so the next best thing is see what others are saying about it.

So you're on the hunt for a new phone right? And you pick a phone you think looks nice and start doing some research to make sure you make a good investment. Where do you go to? reviews right? Ok. So if every review out there is not making this phone out to be great, including windows positive websites, then of course you're going to pick another phone and again go through reviews. You want to know you're getting your money's worth. And without putting down the money you have no way of judging for yourself, so the next best thing is see what others are saying about it.

Truth be told, I'd venture to guess the vast majority of average people NEVER read a review on a phone and simply buy the phone their friends/family have or recommended. Only extremely conscious shoppers will read a phone review these days and those people usually are cheapskates

So you're on the hunt for a new phone right? And you pick a phone you think looks nice and start doing some research to make sure you make a good investment. Where do you go to? reviews right? Ok. So if every review out there is not making this phone out to be great, including windows positive websites, then of course you're going to pick another phone and again go through reviews. You want to know you're getting your money's worth. And without putting down the money you have no way of judging for yourself, so the next best thing is see what others are saying about it.

A review compares one against another and makes a judgement based on features, specs etc. The creepy bloggers I'm talking about are going over and above; doing what CSR's do at the phone store and tell you NOT to buy a phone. Ars Technica article you posted really didn't abuse the 950 as I expected based on your topic. But its clear that blogger can't or don't know how to more forward in a world without google. Maybe he lives overseas where Bing or MS services are not as robust as it is here in the states. But it is absolutely possible to live in a google free environment and never miss them. I've done it for years, but don't tell me not to get the 950 based on nothing to go on. Compare it to an android or iPhone and give me opinion based on analysis.

I think Dan's review is spot on and touched on something that no other reviews really do at all...

Maybe Microsoft doesn't really care that these phones won't help them grow their 1.5% market share. All these reviewers are essentially saying at best "no reason to leave ios or Android". No kidding. In order to do that MS would have to design a waterproof, titanium with 24k gold highlights, 4k screen, 50MP camera, that supports teleporting. And even still that would fall flat because there's still no Snap Chat or Tinder.

What if Microsoft wanted to do what they said they wanted to do and release a phone for WP fans? Yep we've been waiting a long time so they probably rushed the launch. I think this release helps solidify and round out their technology lineup.

Microsoft's best bid to get users to ditch ios and Android is to sure up W10 and make it so robust and prevalent, people start giving W10 mobile a look. Maybe that happens in 2016, maybe not.

I have an Icon, and go back to WP 6.5, so I've stuck with them through it all, but only because I'm a hopeless optimist (which has worn very thin). It's always the next iteration that will fix everything and finally catch us up to our rivals. Just as Apple is a consumer-based company that is trying to also win enterprise, Microsoft is an enterprise-based company trying to also win consumers, and neither company is doing very well with their secondary goal. How MS could let go all of the talented Nokia folks that knew how to build a phone that people wanted, to put out the bland-looking 950's, is beyond me. They have the billions to truly go all-in on the phones if they really wanted to, and yet phones were barely worked on while their teams all did the desktop version of Windows 10. Why wait to then do phones, and put out a version that is so buggy when they could've done them simultaneously? My Icon's battery now lasts less than a day on 10 where with 8.1 it lasted nearly 2 days = poor coding. Continuum, that is basically WinRT, and was a $900 million write-off previously, will not add any new users to our WP base due to its limitations. So I guess I'm still hoping that maybe a Surface Phone, with an Intel-chip that can run Win32 programs is the next holy grail I'll look forward to that might pull us out of the <2% of smartphone user doldrums. I did see that the number of developers for Win10 has gone up from around 200k to about 1.9 million, and that gives me hope that they'll develop universal apps that can be used on our phones and may eventually give us parity with the iPhone and Android OS's. I'll guess I'll go on hoping...

It would be naive to expect that suddenly reviews of 950 and XL would suddenly be all positive and rosy. There is nothing new in those reviews for me. Certainly, new operating system will have some glitches at the beginning it is not a surprise. Apps will not appear magically in thousands, but we all know that. Do not like plastic cover? There is good selection available to replace it with. For me important things is improved battery life, interface that I believe is the best, ample capacity for memory cards and now continuum that is certainly game changer. Only disappointing thing was that 950XL would not offer dual SIM capability. In any case those phones are not for the masses at this stage and I am perfectly fine with it.

Those QHD AMOLED (most likely from Samsung whom Microsoft seem to have partnered with for the supposedly excellent Surface Pro 4 and Book screens) screens use pentile matrix so the actual number of subpixels is going to be lower than a QHD RGB LCD/OLED display. So in that s sense the increased resolution is actually a good thing. Plus using an AMOLED means much better contrast ratios so I can understand why they went with it.

I agree. I'd happily take a 720p screen (that's what we used to have on TVs!) if it meant a much better battery life.

This is exactly what I'm talking about, my current Lumia 640 is 5 inch HD with 2500mah battery, and on win 8.1 it easily lasts two days with a heavy use. I don't believe that QHD amoled is more efficient in terms of battery life, look at any current flagship with such screen, when you use the phone for browsing, emailing, videos, etc. where the screen is on, it hardly lasts a full day and this is truth.

I did see that the number of developers for Win10 has gone up from around 200k to about 1.9 million, and that gives me hope that they'll develop universal apps that can be used on our phones and may eventually give us parity with the iPhone and Android OS's.

Those QHD AMOLED (most likely from Samsung whom Microsoft seem to have partnered with for the supposedly excellent Surface Pro 4 and Book screens) screens use pentile matrix so the actual number of subpixels is going to be lower than a QHD RGB LCD/OLED display. So in that s sense the increased resolution is actually a good thing. Plus using an AMOLED means much better contrast ratios so I can understand why they went with it.

How do you know they are pentile? Are you able to tell up close? I know samsung recently started using full stripe rgb screens and these are quite new. Though pentile apparently can last longer as blue's tend to die faster.

snarky cut-n-paste reply from Ars (which violates this site's TOS due to the pseudo-cursing, but I digress) aside, I (and others) think that's exactly the situation. I just got back from the Microsoft store and the longest screen timeout is "Never" on the AT&T 950. Seriously, if you didn't want to review the phone, just tell Microsoft "no thank you". The half-hearted drivel you published is beneath Ars and beneath you. At least with the Verge, you know that they have a bias and an agenda..and you roll with it. This article was just laziness incarnate.

Yup, Priv reviews were not at all positive, but they were not as negative as Lumia 950 reviews :p

You guys need to stop being biased just because the 950 reviews are for the most part.. Not great. There are a few negative reviews of the Priv like arstechnica (very negative) and a few others. But let's be real.. The vast majority are positive. Just read android central, mobile syrup, verge, Engadget, mashable, stuff TV, wsj and loads of YouTube reviews. There's even one where the guy throws away an iPhone 6 cos he prefers the Priv.

They do point out the negatives and say there is room for improvement but for the most part.. They agree BlackBerry is on the right path.